Dinner at Rosaline LA was great, but you can't please everybody

This post is more than just a restaurant review. It's also about how a restaurant can try really hard and still make a customer frustrated.

First the review ...

My wife and I loved our dinner at Rosaline! We ended up there in sort of a happenstance way. I serve on the board of an anti-hunger advocacy organization - Mazon. We have a board meeting in Los Angeles every year. My wife comes along, and we usually make a short vacation of it, a brief respite from the cold and snow in Minnesota in February. We made reservations in advance at several restaurants, either favorites from past visits or new ones that we wanted to try. When we got a phone call from one of those restaurants, seeking to confirm our plans, we discovered that there would be a private party in the main dining room. We would get a table in the bar. That didn't sound too good to us. We liked the ambiance of the main dining room, and we didn't particularly like the ambiance in the bar. So we cancelled that reservation and began searching for a last-minute alternative. 

We read about Rosaline in the Where Magazine that was in our hotel room. It sounded good. It was fairly new and only had a few TripAdviser reviews. We like Peruvian food. And we could get a reservation (at 8:30 on a Tuesday night). 

We arrived on time, but had to wait for our table, probably about 15 minutes. We did specify that we didn't want to sit in the dining area in the bar (several tables, a chef's table, and a communal counter). Instead we asked for a table in the main dining room where we liked the ambiance better. It's an enclosed patio, quite dark at night, but stylish table lamps provide sufficient light to read the menu and see the food. 

Our server was friendly and helpful. We asked for advice on cocktails as well as how many items we ought to order. We both liked our drinks. Mine was a quita calzón, made with mezcal, gooseberry, coconut water, and lime. My wife had something called a satsuma sora made with vodka, pisco, mandarin, lime, and grenadine. We also started with an item from the ceviche menu - tiradito de corvina which featured sea bass. We both liked it, and it was my wife's favorite plate of the evening. 

The food at Rosaline is intended for sharing. The next plate that we shared was a salad called solterito. It consisted of lima beans, avocado, small tomatoes that had been lightly roasted, pickled onions, feta, olives, and corn. We both liked it, and it was my favorite plate of the evening. We also had a plate of grilled shrimp. They were very tasty, but we felt like they were not any better than any other grilled shrimp. 

So overall, we were pretty pleased by our experience at Rosaline. We liked our food. Good drinks. Friendly, efficient service. Relaxing ambiance.

But, you can't please everybody ...

I'm sure that one of the things that makes the restaurant business so challenging is individual dietary restrictions and preferences. Frequently, when we make reservations at a nice place, we're asked about any food allergies or restrictions. For us, it's cilantro. I don't particularly like it, and it makes my wife ill. We worried that would be a challenge at Rosaline because cilantro is a fairly common ingredient in ceviche and other Latin cuisine. Our server took note of our preference. Happily, none of the items we ordered had cilantro. 

A more common dietary request is for vegetarian meals. We're not vegetarians. But Rosaline has a whole separate menu for vegetarians. We were seated at our table just in time to overhear another customer complaining to his server. His vegetarian paella was served with an egg on top. He felt that was not consistent with a vegetarian diet, and furthermore, the menu didn't mention that the paella had egg on it.

The server was trying really hard to deal with his complaint. She offered to take it away and bring another one. But he declined. He commented that paella takes time to cook and apparently he didn't want to wait. In the end, he and his date kept the paella. I didn't notice how they avoided the egg. (I think maybe the egg was acceptable to one of them.) I thought the server did a good job of being sympathetic and tried to make it right. The only hint of defensiveness I heard was a comment that she didn't understand that they wanted a vegan paella (hence no animal products whatsoever) which would have been served without an egg. 

(By the way, I wasn't particularly eavesdropping. The tables in Rosaline are fairly close together so that the complaint at the table next to us was easily discernible without purposely listening in. Add that observation to my previous comments about ambiance.)

Rosaline was one of two restaurants that we ate at during this trip that automatically add a gratuity to the final bill. At least one reviewer on TripAdviser complained about that practice, and blamed it for inattentive service. The practice doesn't bother me, and we had good service. I haven't seen any good analysis of the relationship between good service and tipping. I thought it was interesting that at Rosaline, there wasn't even an option to include an even higher tip amount. 

So far in this review, I haven't commented on value. We felt that our meal was reasonably priced. But there are a few items on the menu that are quite pricey. The short ribs, for example, are $58. The paella (with shrimp, so not vegetarian) is $42 for a small portion and $84 for large. Some of the reviewers on TripAdviser complained about expensive meals, which I can see if you order some of these more expensive items. 

We would definitely consider a return visit to Rosaline on some future trip to LA.